culture-buzz: The Agency’s alternative marketing Blog

Last November the New York Times described the un-ethical business practices of the online eyewear vendor DecorMyEyes. The website was very well ranked in many popular Google search results related to designer glasses. Thanks to numerous consumer complaints on opinion-sharing websites, DecorMyEyes received many backlinks from popular websites and benefited from an increasing PageRank.

To prevent scammers from gaining any visibility thanks to consumer complaints, Google decided to penalize websites receiving too much negative content. Of course integrating automatic sentimenting to the algorithm had its downfall; all controversial or political content was bound to be penalized. To counter this effect, Google decided to blacklist a limited number of e-commerce websites that receive an unusual amount of flak from consumers.

Quora is the newest kid on the social media block. In this article we discuss its question based social interface as well as its benefits to both brands and professionals. Talk of the town Bloggers, Twitteratis and influencers alike have been set ablaze of late by Silicon Valley’s latest darling: Quora. The brainchild of former [...]

We’re living in the so-called age of curation. And that’s great, because starting another for-pleasure blog becomes one more thankless full-time job, given time or the demands users start making on you if you ever get big.

That’s why we’re so keen on Scoop.it (@scoop.it), which launched in private beta a few weeks ago.

One agency that never half-asses its holiday card is Modea (see last year’s Santa iPhone). It doesn’t just look to be cool, it aims for contagion.

We don’t really have the words to describe this. Our thoughts are a general splatter of, “Can we have that job?” and “Are those potato slices still edible?”

We give you the world’s collectively shared 2010, neatly packaged in less than three minutes:

Executions for feature film TRON are giving us the glee-thrills right now. They slather the 360° media landscape and are united by a creativity unique to each medium.

The brand used flash projector technology to reproduce what happens when you look up at the sun, or see a flash of light: you close your eyes and see the shape of that light slowly fade away.

Happy holidays, you internet-guzzling cherubim. In partnership with Android-supporting HTC/T-Mobile, YouTube is counting down to the New Year by posting one of “the year’s most memorable videos” a day on a special subsite.

Joining the cavalry of crappy ideas that’ll gain lots of unmerited attention is La Senza’s Cup Size Choir. Here you get a row of moody lingerie-clad minxes lying in a row. Use your keyboard to “play” them, because each will squeak out a note corresponding to her cup size: A-F. Score free yum-rotic bed-wriggling action with every “La!”

Dentsu London has been experimenting with design consultancy BERG in lightplay and filmmaking. The first collabo film they’ve put together, “Making Future Magic,” demonstrates the curious and amazing characteristics of an iPad application they’ve just produced.

I have no idea whether TRON’s going to be good or not, but the ambient advertising for it is incredible. Check out this light show at London’s Southbank, created with projection mapping technology.

Today is World AIDS Day, and in the days previous we’ve seen a lot of lead-ups prepping us for the advertising melodrama that comes with.

With help from agency Plurial, the Swiss Federation of Osteopaths generated both awareness for its org and downloads for its iPhone app (which, among other basic things, tells you which osteos are in your vicinity).

Inspiration with help from LEGO: can we ever say no? No, we can’t. Not to LEGO, anyway.